This kind of thing only happens in films ...

You know that perfect scene in the film? 

The one where the boy finally declares his love for the girl ...

I actually love Andrew Lincon a little

Or the friend in the cafe gives the protagonist the perfect pep talk ...

The film that makes me grateful
for every decision I've ever been
allowed to make!

And the hero makes the right decision and someone is saved ...

"Oh you're Celtic? ... There's lovely"

All of these are cracking plot devices, don't get me wrong I love a good love declaration/pep talk/happy ending, but they're hardly realistic. Life happens bit by bit and very few of us will ever have our faith realigned in a perfect pep talk, or unburden ourselves in the snow on christmas eve to our dream partner, or ever have the chance to save an entire family and change history.

However, I did indeed have one of these strange only-happens-in-a-film moments recently:

I was sat on a train, on a spur of the moment trip home after a few hellish days, straight off a night shift still in uniform sat quietly with a book and bottle of squash. I had been giving myself a bit of a hard time and thinking about dropping out of the course a bit, mainly because I kind of lost faith in myself and started doubting my own knowledge to the point where I was making mistakes because I was second guessing myself. Anyway, feeling a bit shitty and wandering what the point was I was considering dropping out and was content with sloping off home to work my way through an assignment and then I met this woman, who was sat opposite me and who spotted my uniform, that was unsuccessfully hidden under my cardigan. And she changed everything.

She was a midwife, who had qualified two years ago at my own university, and the hour or so we sat and talked convinced me that I am absolutely on the right path, with a mixture of anecdotes which remind me of the good times, and her own stories of training which reminded me that the second year is a long hard slog that no-one enjoys and only the ones who can persevere through it are meant to get through it.

A strange moment of pure co-incidence, where a total stranger who I just happened to sit opposite helped me out and at just the right time when I was at my lowest eb where I needed to be and which was the right path (or track - geddit!) for me.

I shall finish by saying - trains are awesome, I love trains. I've met cool, lovely, funny and just plain odd people travelling around the place, always talk to people on trains because how many other times in life are you going to spend a few hours sat with a group of total strangers, unable to leave and all in exactly the same position?

Student nursing 101: how to change your body clock!

Now, you may well be one of those people who can just flip a switch, set their alarm for 5:30am and just get up and be ready no - problem. Well, for the rest of us it takes a little more work, so here are Nurse P's top tried and tested methods for switching your body clock!

The "slow and steady" method

Set your alarm clock a little bit earlier every day over the weekend to get yourself sorted.
eg:

Saturday - 7:30am
Sunday   - 6:30am
Monday  - 5:30am

Great for: those who love to slowly acclimatize and love early mornings
Bad for    : those who like a lie-in or have any intentions of getting drunk on Friday or Saturday night.

The "make your self tired" method

Exhaust yourself the day before placement; run everywhere, cycle a full load of shopping back from Asda, take the kids out for a three hour trek around the park, make a souffle, have loads of sex, swim 10 miles and then do a load of ironing. And then chill out in bed with a cup of herbal tea and a good book.

Great for: those who have a million and one thing to do and have the energy to do them all in one day.
Bad for   : those who are always organised in advance or who like Sunday afternoon tele with a glass of wine.

The "Don't stop 'till you drop" method

Have a massive lie in on the Saturday, and then work straight through the night until the next evening, not going to sleep until around 7 or 8pm on the Sunday - so you wake up refreshed and sorted on the Monday!

Great for: Night owls who like to work until dawn on assignments, and then keep going all the next day.
Bad for   : Anyone with important stuff to do on Sunday, you will not be up to operating heavy machinery! Or anyone who may well take a nap.

Student nurse placement haul!

This is going to be my run down of all the stuff that in my opinion are "must haves" for the student nurse on placement and quite a few are things that I hadn't thought off before I started so hopefully this'll help you too!

• Your Uniform
  
  Might seem a little obvious, but you'd be surprised how long it takes for your uniform to arrive from your universities uniform supplier. It took me several months, and I actually had to use a non university-logoed tunic for my first placement because it was taking them so long to get the logoed ones sent out. So be prepared! You can also get a rebate on the cost of your uniform from the uni, but remember to get your application in before the deadline ... unlike me!
• ID + holder
  
  Depending on your university and depending on the trust you are training will affect the type of ID you
  
  need. For example my trust wanted us to use our normal uni ID for hospital ID, whereas other student nurses with other trusts needed them to get a special Trust ID for student nurses. Any induction days at your trust should tell you about this, but make sure you have what you need. And make sure you have a durable ID holder: some hospitals don't let you use lanyards, and some are fastened with clips kind of like a clothes peg which I don't like because I found it dragged my tunic pocket and annoyed me. There's a kind called a lever clip which I prefer because I found it kept my ID flat against my hip. Similarly if your ID is a hospital ID which opens doors to department and wards then you might want it kept on an extendible ID holder so you don't have to take it off your uniform to use it on doors.
• Pens!
  If you ever want to know how a smoker feels when trying to find a cigarette at 3am then try not having a pen for 5 minutes on the ward. There's a desperation that takes you over as you hunt and hunt and hunt and no-one else seems to be lurking about with a spare pen. So always have a pen in your tunic, and if you want my advice, then always keep a spare in your bag so that that morning when you over sleep and forget a pen - the it's not the end of the world!
• A good quality stain remover
  Your uniform WILL get grotty, and grubby and manky. From general dirt, medication spills or in my

  

  The night shift where my pen
  decided to explode!

  case biro ink! You kind of want to look as presentable as possible for most of the time, so I would recommend investing in some good stain remover. Especially since your uniform will most likely be white, bleach is also pretty good, but it's more or a high maintenance cleaning method as it's a kind of keep an eye on your washing kind of method!
• Lunch box and water bottleYou might be buying lunch at the hospital or you might be bringing a packed lunch, either way I'd recommend having a Tupperware box and a water bottle. Many housekeepers run very strict staff fridges, mine wasn't alowed to hold plastic carrier bags which is why even if I was buying a sandwich from the shop I would shove it in a tupperwear box, you may also find that your houskeeper on the ward requires you to put your name and todays date on your luch - and that's just easiser with tupperwear! Some people are a bit funny about drinking tap water so there are some really funky water bottles you can buy with a kind of built in water filter in the cap. I have never used one so I can't really recommend it, but I know loads
  
  of people in yoga use them and love them so ...
• Jewellery retainersThis one's quite a specific one! But for those of you with any piercings that are facial then you might want to invest in a piercing retainer. If you haven't seen them they're flesh coloured studs that make your piercing almost invisible and because they're flexible they're really safe.
  Depending on your hospital they might be totally cool with you having a facial piercing, or like mine they might not be cool at all! Mine isn't so I wear one in my nose piercing but it's up to you, although it's something worth looking into and considering buying.
• Hair and MakeupOne for the girls among us perhaps! General rule of thumb for nursing staff is that your hair should be above your collar, you'll see plenty of people disobaying this rule, but the only way to escape a bollocking is to follow it. Also - quite aside from any kind of infection control it makes me gag to think of my hair hanging into a wound or something! So I always wear my hair in a bun, a normal bun tends to fall out in my hair so I use a bun doughnut, it was about £2 from Tesco and I wear it every day - so I can't really recommend it highly enough!
  Also invest in a good quality moisturiser and foundation, I'm not one for high end brands or anything - but I haven't found a foundation that stays as well over a 12 hour shift as Bobbi Brown's Skin foundation SPF 15. And the combination of no air, hot wards and long hours with little sleep wreaks havoc on my skin - so make sure to invest in some kick ass moisturiser. I love Simple's light moisturiser but go for what you love!
  
  
  

So I hope that that list is all right for you all - it's not all encompassing and it's not total, and it's just my own personal list of what I felt is needed most on placement. So feel free to comment on what other things you think might be needed, and a massive good luck to anyone starting their nursing course this September!

Just jump in!

This was a piece of advice that I gave to a nurse starting her first placement, on my latest placement I was faced with so many opportunities to try out new skills that I had observed, like making up IV's, catheterising, dressings and passing NG (naso-gastric) tubes. But a lot of these things i.e. the NG tube, will happen occasionally and not on a lot of wards, so if you get the chance to do one - then do it!

A properly placed NG tube on an X-ray

Over my 10 week placement, but the time I reached my 9th week I had seen two NG's being passed, and while on a night shift one needed doing. So - putting on my best confident in this face I asked to do it. It was terrifying, it's easy to put an NG down the trachea instead of the oesophagus for example. (For the record - that is a bad idea!) And obviously, shoving a tube down someone's nose isn't much fun for them, and a lot of people have really strong gag reflexes, some people will try and hit you, scratch you and kick you, but after a point it becomes more important to get the tube down to their stomach to feed them than to avoid being maimed. With the 12 hour shifts and the missed breaks and the poor pay, half the fun of nursing is getting to be a martyr and striding into the house at 8am after a night shift to proclaim: "I got kicked in the stomach tonight but at least Mr Smith isn't going to go into a diabetic coma on my watch!"

Edith Cavell .
A WW1 British nurse, executed for helping Allied soldiers escape occupied Belgium. 

So my tip to the lovely student nurse I met on my (now former) ward, was to just jump in, if you see someone about to do something that you're interested in, then go on and ask if you can watch. I've watched:

• Chest drains, ( I actually became part of Dr Williams' Chest Drain Dream Team!)
• Lumbar punctures,
• PICO dressings,
• A Bronchoalveolar lavage,
• Seen some really funky wounds,
• Passed an NG tube,
• Removed cannulas 
• Watched a load of X-Rays

and many many more things besides. Speaking to the fellow student nurse, she was nervous and was a bit unsure about how to get to do stuff. I tried to reassure her and now I'm trying to reassure you guys too - the way to gain experience is to nag, wheedle and blag your way into watch procedures, because once you've watched once or twice, you can offer to lend a hand for the next few, and after that you can ask to do them yourselves.

Experience breeds Competence

I've now finished that particular 10 week placement, and it's now onwards and upwards, that pesky assignment that I was worried I had failed I passed so I'm clear to move onto the second year! I've moved out of halls (or the prison-cum-psychiatric hospital that my Mam christened it) and into my new shared house which is very exciting, it's going to be fun if a little difficult, we're all very different people with big personalities, different interests, different senses of humour and everything so I'm sure sparks will fly but we're all really close friends and we all love alcohol and bacon so I'm sure that things wont be too bad!

The idea that I'm now a second year student nurse is terrifying, 1/3 of the way through my course, my Mam pointed out that I left high school and started 6th form 3 years ago - and in 3 years time, I'll be a qualified in my blues, hopefully doing everything right (ish)

I'll speak to you all soon, and if any of you are particularly interested then my next post is going to be a "Student nurse haul" blog post, about what you will need for those of you starting your training in September.

Moving on and my addiction

"There is no standing still because time is moving forward."

Greg Lake

It's not something I've ever really considered, when you think of nursing you think how great it is to be helping someone, or how hard it is when there's someone you can't "fix" or the paperwork pisses you off, or the hours get you down. But I never really considered how we as nurses are expected to just move on.

Treat a patient for weeks, months or years - grow close to them and their family and then to lose them and within hours to be treating a totally new patient as if the previous were never there.

I lost a patient over the weekend, I worked Saturday - and Monday. At Monday handover we were told that we had lost her the night before, by the time drugs rounds had started the room was being fogged and by tea time we were admitting a replacement. And that's meant to be fine: we've lost A and in her place is B. You don't think that when you become a nurse - you don't imagine that you're going to be in a position where you just have to switch off and over so quickly, and it's hard - it's so hard, because it's not the kind of thing that we're programmed to do, we're meant to care, we're meant to care and yet we're meant to just move on without being emotional, and that's inhuman and hard.

So on I move, I smile and I welcome chat away - and then when I get home I think: think about how this works, I drink my tea I eat my pasta I watch my tele and I think.

"This is my life, I  can either think; there's one person who I did everything for to make their end more comfortable, I learnt from treating them, and here's a brand new person - who needs my help and who I can transfer all this new knowledge to. Or I can jump - go and leave and take myself  off and become a temp again."

And I've chosen - I'm staying. If you don't move on and fight it out and keep going then you're never going to get anywhere. Nothing worth having comes easily.

I am an addict.

I don't take drugs, I don't drink to excess, I'm not a sex addict - I'm a courgette addict. I mean I've always liked courgettes, but recently someone told me that courgette, prawns and tomatos make a lovely pasta sauce so: off I go and make some very nice pasta sauce with courgette in.
 And BOOM! I'm now on my 3rd week of eating courgette with everything - every single one of my tea's these 3 weeks have consisted of courgette with something - anything - as long as it's courgetty!
Agghh - it's so delicious! I'm going to assume that this is an OK addiction, I mean if you look at alcoholism, heroin addiction, smoking and hardcore courgette addiction and I'm pretty sure that mine'll come out the safest!

Nurse P's top 10 tips of being a nursing student!

So, it's occurred to me that the majority of you reading that will either be prospective student nurses or current nurses. So I thought I ought to do some kind of top 10 run down of tips since I'm almost at the end of my first year.

10 
There are no stupid questions.

This one's not just for nursing, pretty much anyone can benefit from this one. But in nursing, for that is what I know,  it is particularly important. Firstly in lectures, you're going to learn a lot of stuff ... or rather you're going to be told a lot of stuff that you're going to be expected to remember, and asking questions - helping you to understand the wider picture of the patient, the condition and the body. And when you're on placement ask questions, I don't mean be pestering and pulling on your mentors sleeves, but ask what condition a patient has then you can research it, ask the physio what it is they're doing, ask where things are because there will come the day when a doctor grabs you at the nurses station and says "Can you bring three blue cannulas to side room 8 please?" and you're going to have to fetch some and know where they are. Same goes for asking how something works, when your mentor asks you to set a litre of water to run through it helps if you're not staring at the machine like this!

9
It might feel like it's all hopeless - but it's better than you think.

Oh my God, it's not going in and, I'm going to be shit at this and OH MY GOD I DON'T UNDERSTAND! I'm prepared to put good money on every-one of you reading this will either have thought that at one point in the course or will do at one point or another. Yeah - we all have, I have, I will again, it's going to happen - live with it! Try not to feel as if it's all entirely hopeless, things, in my experience, tend to come together in time. Sometimes that thing that seemed like double Dutch to you in that lecture, suddenly makes sense once you attend the relevant seminar, or once you have another lecture a fortnight later that pieces the pieces together or even once you're on placement and you see that thing that makes no sense to you, in the flesh and suddenly you get it!
And there is no better feeling than something going wrong on the ward and going onto automatic pilot and knowing exactly what to do and sorting it. And I found that I knew exactly what to do once, just because the stuff that had been taught in lectures has seeped in and stuck without me even knowing and I was very proud of myself.

8. 
Buy a stethoscope. 

They are like gold dust, if you get asked to do the obs on your bay, and you can't find a stethoscope - you're screwed, so buy one and make it bright! Because when someone tries to steal it and spends the rest of your shift wandering around with it around their neck, it helps if you can spot it. I recommend Littmann stethoscopes - they are ace, genuinely the best ones you can buy, not cheap but like wine and shoes good things rarely are!

7.
Be positive.

Yeah a confused patient just tried to hit you as you were wiping their bum, yeah you're 10 hours into a 12 hour shift, yeah you're tired and hot and your feet hurt. But try to be positive, some days are going to be shit and some are going to be amazing, some will make you want to cry and some will make you want to sing with joy. But no-one, especially not the patients are going to benefit from you hating everything. Off load onto other student nurses when you get home, with a glass of wine and last nights Corrie, but the time when you're at work is the time to extenuate the positives. You might forget about that patients you looked after for 3 days 2 years ago, but chances are they wont forget you, and the aim of the game is for them to remember you as that cracking nurse who was really helpful and supportive, as opposed to that miserable bitch who walked around with a face like a slapped arse. Take your break alone, outside and let your armour fall with a cup of tea, a packet of crisps or a cigarette (whichever floats your boat - or all three!) and recover if needs be, but your patients need you to be strong, so try to be.

6.
You're not a normal student - so don't try to be.

You're at a uni - with many students attending it, and chances are you will bump into them, live with them, end up being filmed by them for course work, have sex with them or maybe even marry them! But the time will come when you realise that you're not like them,  they're different! Because all those stereotypes about binge drinking during the week, lie-ins and missing lectures are possible for them.

• Nurses have long years, a normal student will usually finish in or before June, and return late September or October. A nursing student will finish in the middle of August and start back at the beginning of September. And forget a 4-6 week Christmas and Easter, it's two weeks for us.

• Whereas a normal student will often have a 2 or 3 day week, a nursing student will have a 4-5 day working week in lectures, not to mention those pesky periods on placement with 5:30 starts.

• Due to some very specific training from the NMC guidelines, you can't really miss lectures, you'll have to sign a register and if you don't turn up then it's bye bye! 

I'm not saying that being a nurse is dull, or boring or anything even vaguely like that, I mean what other course means you spend your lunchtime laughing about catheters!? But if your flatmates are going out on the lash on a Tuesday night while you have 9am lectures the next morning, suck it up, swig some Horlicks and settle down to watch tele. You can still go out an have fun, trust me - I've drunk enough to feel a bull on occasion, but just remember that while you're both here to get degrees yours is a professional qualification and as a result you get to have a lot less mid-week fun. On the plus side you will quickly become the human equivalent of Eastenders Wiki page!

5.
Stop trying to look sexy - it's not going to work!

This isn't a vendetta against fake eyelashes or anything don't worry, I love my falsies for a night out! But in your uniform, when on placement,

don't think you're going to look like her, because you wont, I mean for a start the tunics make you look like a Moomin, the trousers make you like like your applying for a Simon Cowell look-a-like competition and those shoes ... well, if I say lesbian police-woman then you get the idea! But you know what, that ugly tunic and those trousers that come up weirdly high are actually really comfy, don't flash your arse when you bend over a patient and are loose enough so that you can bend and stretch. (The also have massive pockets that are great for stashing stuff in!) Those shoes are ugly as hell and as comfy and supportive as though you were standing on cherubs covered in silk wrapped feathers. It's the girls who come in with freshly curled hair, eyelashes that could knock out Joe Calzaghe they've got so much mascara on who start to slide down the warm sweaty slope first, you might not look sexy - but if you look no wors 12 hours after you started the shift than you did than when you started - then go and give yourself a pat on the back!

4.
Don't fall at the first hurdle.

What's this? You've failed an exam? Well - I'd give up now if I were you.

Yeah - not really - don't fall at the first hurdle, we all fail exams and think "OK, so this isn't for me, I'm off home." have a good cry, drink a lot of wine or eat a lot of cake, shout, rage, dance on your own with your ipod in but don't give up. Or at least not because you've failed an exam, if you come to realise that the course  and the occupation isn't for you then maybe you should re-think your options. But we all fail at least once and it's hard and soul crushing and we all wonder about dropping out. But remember why you started all this,   if you fail more than once and have to take a year out then that might be the time to consider your options, but until then - don't start to apply for the temp work just yet eh.
(For the record this also applies to placements, you might get a shit one where the nurses hate you, the patients hate you and you just want to curl up into a ball and weep, but for each shit one you're pretty much guaranteed 2 good placements. And while you're loving your next one - that annoying friend who loved their last one will be crying into the pillow because they hate this one!)

3.
Be appropriate.

I add this one with caution, because appropriate is a kind of a how long is a piece of string thing. What everyone thinks is appropriate is different, I mean I have no issue when doctors and nurses pop out for a fag break, but some other people do. However some things are probably universally thought of as inappropriate:
(these are all things that student nurses I know have done)

• Telling patients how shit faced you got last night/will get tonight.
• Telling lecturers how you used to be into drugs but you're "not in that scene any more"
• Telling people loudly in the staff room how much you hate Matron or Sister, hate them if you like but keep it schtum!

2.
It's poo - get over it! 

This one seems obvious for nurses, but you'd be surprised about how many people struggle with this, everyone has something that makes them retch and want to vomit, be it blood, poo, urine, fluid from a stoma bag, sputum, pressure sores ect. (For the record mine's sputum - cleaning out a trachy tube makes me want to do exorcist style vomiting.) But in the nicest possible way you need to deal with this and get on with it, it'll still disgust you and you'll still shudder but it needs doing, your patient needs you help them as best as you can - so you need to the job in hand. My top tips for getting through are:

• Grin, this helps stop the gag reflex - you'll look a bit manic and insane grinning wildly but hey, go for it it's worth it for not retching over a patient's face!
• NEVER NEVER NEVER inhale through your nose, I made this mistake once ... never never never again.

1.
Remember to laugh.

This is actually me - I'm really hairy when I don't shave.

You are on your way to having some of the best times of your life, some of the funniest incidents will happen to you when you're on the wards, you'll see the most bizarre things, have the oddest things said to you. And the best way of coping with all the bad stuff, the heartbreaking, the painful and the soul destroying is to look at the great, funny and bizarre stuff and to laugh, laugh on your own, laugh with the doctors, laugh with the nurses, laugh with fellow students and laugh with all your mates who are already concerned about your sanity, and will be even more so now!

So I hope that my 10 tops tips and advice for prospective and newly starting student nurses have been of some assistance, please do tell me in the comments section if there's anything you feel I've missed out!

My God I'm stressed!

So ... I'm stressed! And it's not often that I say that, I'm the kinda gal who goes, "Nah I'm fine!" or "Ach, it'll all be OK.", "Worse things happen at sea!" is another perennial favourite. It's not that I don't worry, I do, and I panic and get a really sexy red chin when I'm not chilled out. But over the years I've become the one who sorts issues out, I'm the girl who's there with the hugs and tea bags. 

Are you worried/nervous/upset/angry? Then come to my house, I'll make you tea, I'll crack open the cake tin (because I am the only person since 1963 who own's a cake tin) and you can talk things through. Nurse P will make everything better. 

And because I may be a nice and kind person, I'm also irritatingly honest and fairly stingy with compliments so when I tell you that you're a wonderful person and that all the pain is worth it because you're going to be brilliant at what ever it is you're trying to do, (be it soufflé making, nurse training or learning to drive) it tends to have the desired effect, in that people buy me cake and make me tea and pick me up when I'm sobbing with heartbreak or alcohol.

Because who wouldn't love that face and coat!

So when I'm stressed, I downplay it, I'm emotionally constipated about things that really worry me, whereas bad boyfriends, bad patients and bad shit in general my upset me, and I can talk about  'till the cows get home. If it worries me or is stressing me out then expect me to hole up in my house until through a combination of tea, cooking arse-kicking food and watching re-runs of Jonathan Creek gets me back on track. 

I'm stressed because I have a great deal on my plate at the moment , first off that assignment that I failed a while back - my re-write has not started looking better than the shite original and not passing it second time around means good bye nursing course, hello going back to being a receptionist where my line manager hates me and always told me I'd make a bad nurse. Secondly my new placement, 12 hour shifts are OK, the work is great (obvs loads more piss, shit, and vomit than last time - but I love it!) and the patients are lush sooooo - what could possibly be bothering me. WELL! 

"The human body is the only machine for which there are no spare parts."  Hermann M. Biggs

1954 Morris Minor saloon 

We have a patient on the ward, they are dying and I'm sorry to be so blunt, but this patient in their early 20's is dying - and by all rights they probably should have already died. It's only through medical intervention and their families un-ending support and belief in their relatives ability to recover. Which they wont - doctor's have been pumping their body full of anti-biotics and blood transfusions and everyone, all the doctors and all the nurses know that this person is simply not going to recover, not through lack of trying or because we're cruel but because the human body is an incredible thing but like any machine, which is of course essentially what it is, there is only so much it can take. Think of a Morris Minor car, an absolute beast of an engine, a beautiful car and a rarity. In 1954 they were 10 a penny,  a very common car, but now rarer than hens teeth. There's only so much a car can take, only so many times the gear box can be changed and the fan belt replaced and the rust covered and the pain touched up. We are but machines, very clever and complex machines but engines none the less and there is so much we can take. When I see this patient and I care for them and I watch the doctors doing yet more blood and nurses set up another IV of antibiotics, part of me aches to say: "Just let go, let go and let your child rest in piece, it may seem in human and cruel but it's not - it's the kinder thing to do than to just keep this going. There is no quality of life, there is nothing of your child to save." Perhaps I'm cruel, perhaps I'm heartless, perhaps I would understand if I were a mother. 

But I'm not a mother, I'm a nurse and I see how much this family wants their child to be healthy again and I respect and understand that, but as a medical professional I can also say with the same mind that understands all of that, that there are wishes and their are facts. And in my line of work sometimes we have to work with wishes over facts, however unhelpful such wishes may be.

I don't want to dispirit you all - so in some rather better news, I've just passed my final exam of my first year! Woop Woop - which is making my stress a little better, as is my recent discovery of YooMoo frozen yoghurt in my local Tesco, I personally recommend the Tropicoolmoo flavour it's very VERY nice, and the perfect thing for when I get back from the crazy humid heat of the ward to my nice cool house! I love summer as much as the next man, but in the hospital the heat is something else. And here's a photo of a celebratory ferret - to celebrate passing exams and discovering frozen yoghurt!

Until next time: au revoir! 

There's a lot of love in a hospital

First off - I'm very sorry for being so bad at posting up until now!

But here I am all the same - I'm still on placement at the moment, and despite the tiredness and finding it hard to be apart from all my family I'm loving it. Which I think can generally be taken as a good sign! Someone, a non nurse, asked me what's the best thing about working in a hospital - which is a hard question, because working in a hospital is such an odd thing.

Being a nurse is hard to describe, but working in a hospital? Much much harder! So what is it like - well - it's lovely, I imagine that it's akin to working in a hotel or airport - you see people, for a moment in their lives. Depending on where you work - it could be their first breath, their last breath, a one off visit, or one of many - but either way you'll see their life in all it's gory details, families under stress, utter joy, heart break - the whole shebang!

But most of all I see a lot of love, when people come to my current ward for surgery - they're stressed and scared - quite understandably - as are their family. And it's in this snap shot that you see raw emotion and true love. When I admit a patient for surgery and see their friend, their parent, child or spouse say goodbye, see them crying or just having a silent hug I know that what they have really is love, it's the tie that bonds and that can't be broken. I'm not naive - I'm not for a moment suggesting that no-couple has ever broken up after going through something like surgery. But that true love that I see then, it may fade it may not, it may even go - or it may stay, but the love in that moment - that love that covers all relationships - and is all consuming - that cannot be broken. It's a little like the opening scene of Love Actually, attached below if you haven't seen that scene!

I often ask people how they met their husband or wife, I think it puts them at ease and makes them forget about being scared of the surgery: so here I have my top 3 favorite answers!

1. "I was playing tennis with an friend in 1936 while I was on holiday in Wales, and this beautiful girl walked past the court, I turned to my friend and said what a pretty girl I had just seen, and he told me that the girl was his sister."
2. "She was a roadie with my rock band in the 70's ... that band was terrible!" 
3. "We were both in the Gilbert and Sullivan society at university, but he didn't notice me, so I joined the ballroom dancing society and spent a long time trying to become his dance partner."

BCG disaster!

Disaster has struck Nurse P – due to an audit on the university I’m not allowed to go on placement without my BCG, I should have been getting at the end of February (not my choice – you’re allocated the appointments by occupational health) and just staying the hell away from any patients with TB in the mean time! But no – it’s all change, I’ve been sent for a blood test to find out if I need a BCG, and then then sometime next week I’ll be jabbed, with a developing scar on my upper arm and be free to go back out into the world and heal the sick. Which is cracking – in the mean time I get to spend 10 days not quite sure where I stand and doing random bits and bobs of work. I have so so so almost finished my assignment, I am going to do the last 500 words before I allow myself to leave the library and go and have a lovely shower and a stir fry for my tea! Bliss!

What’s odd about being back in the North of England is that it really does feel like home now, as much as I miss Wales and being back at home home (I even listen to Welsh radio when I’m working) my little room, my little flat my little city is where I belong right now. I had to cycle 3 miles to get my bike fixed this morning – and then walked back in the cold winter sun to do my essay, it was only after I got back that I realised, that while 3 miles off on my bike to find a repair shop would be nothing back home, suddenly it was nothing here. This city is now so a part of my life that I’m kind of confident in getting around and about!

Anyway – that’s enough of me being philosophical – and hopefully when I next post – I’ll be back in the hospital!

finger + blender = ....

Tonight I had an evening of knitting and Mad Men planned, but I made the mistake of popping out to Tescos  for a pint of milk at 8pm, and ended up going to A&E. I walk out of my flat and found my friend T sat with my friend C getting first aid, after T - like an idiot - decided to put his finger in a hand blender and switch it on ... to "see what would happen", he then promptly fainted and hit his head on a cupboard, getting an inch long cut on his scalp, concussion and one hell of a bruise on his cheek.

Since C said he wanted to go to the pub, it was decided that I should accompany T to A&E, because I was a) sober, and b) "it'll be useful for you to see how they do the stitches!". So off I pop, with no book, no phone, no Knitting and no cash to A&E, I got to enjoy T flirting with the two female paramedics, and then a hour and half's wait - a hell of a game of eye spy. But - eventually (and after sitting through 3 rotations of waiting room's full) we were let in to cubicals, I should say at this point that that wasn't a complaint of NHS waiting times in A&E, T was a pillock and in pain, but he was fine in himself, he had minor concussion, but nothing that a good nights sleep and a few days wont cure.

The triage nurse and the doctor were lovely, the both thought that he was a total pillock, and told him so, but equally they both looked after him very well. His head was pretty easy to fix, a wash through with some saline and then he was glued back together. But his finger proved a little bit more problematic, it bled - an awful lot - it took three goes to get the steri-strips to stick down, but in the end, it worked, and we were sent home with a couple of pamphlets and a lot of laughing.

But what struck me was the comeradery and the real care of the staff - yet another moment when I've felt, completely and utterly reassured in my choice of occupation - which is nice among all the moments of being unsure and worried, to have a moment of being so sure!

Surgery

Today, while on the ward I was "spoked" out into theater, I got to watch surgery. It was scary and not something I would want to work in, HOWEVER it was bloody fantastic to see, one operation was the filling away of inflamed cartilage in a patients knees, it was a laparoscopy so in terms of blood guts and gore there wasn't much on offer, and it was very interesting, to see all the bone and cartilage, and fluid and how it all sits together, but - watching a man file away at some cartilage was horrible, however good it is for the patient, it still looked like they were raping her knee. I was demoralised and feeling sad I hadn't enjoyed it, especially since I was looking forward to going in to watch some surgery, but a saviour came in the form of Bob the anaesthetist, who sent me off to Theater C, after the first knee had been completed, theater C had a hemicolectomy, the removal of a portion of the colon. This was far more up my street.

The colon is part of the bowel, and so before surgery the patient must have an enema to "empty the field" it was only after I had left the theatre that I realised that this particular patient had been admitted by me this morning, and I had watched him have his enema - not glamorous or exciting but I did like the circle of life quality of my day! Seeing the guts of this man out on the table was incredible, however many diagrams and photographs of the internal organs one sees, you never realise how much there actually is inside of you, in terms of sheer volume, there is shed loads let me tell you! I'm amazed that it all fits in, it makes you think "OH - that's why I haven't got a flat tummy!" because there is so much inside of you that makes you work, I mean you could fill buckets with the amount of stuff there is going on in there - honestly! I'm quite small a person, and I'm amazed that there's room.

Before the first surgery I helped to put the patient under, I held, the mask in place, and pushed the tube to help her breath once she was anaesthetised into her windpipe. If you want to know what one looks like: it looks like a rubber vagina on the end of a tube ... obviously!

I'm just about to come to the end of my first placement, and it had honestly been a completely fantastic fortnight, I've learnt skills, I've made friends, and I've met so many great patients who I hope are all now well on the way to recovery! I've met the worlds sexyest anaesthetist this side of anywhere, (who doesn't wear a wedding ring, and I've put my colleagues on the task of finding out if he's married haha!) and I've learnt the pain of putting TED stockings on patients, TEDs are the work of the devil and are evil to put on people, (think insanely tight flight socks) but are useful in preventing DVT's.

Oh - and I've become the queen of doing blood sugar testing!

Being a real nurse for a fortnight!

I've been a little down recently - I don't really feel much like a student nurse at the moment, a prime issue with an academic course for a practical occupation of course is that you spend an awful lot of time studying things and not an awful lot actually doing things.
But on Monday - Monday will see me on my first placement at our local hospital! I'm very excited - I have a uniform (which is very exciting since the mayhem of getting it in the first damn place ) - I have a fob watch - I have a slightly grumpy mentor  and now - surely - maybe - possibly - I'll start to feel more like nurse!